Fall 2009 Roundup

Over at ProfHacker, Ethan Watrall suggests several things on his end of the semester checklist, including an end of the semester roundup post on your blog. So, here's mine. I taught in the EKU Honors Program for the first time, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I taught Rhetoric with Chris Neumann (English). My teaching responsibilities centered on informal logic and Plato's Republic. The course focuses on some of the literature and history of the American Civil War, and somehow it all fits together. I suppose this says something about the Republic, as it was easy to relate Plato's thoughts on justice, virtue, and society to many of the issues arising in the Civil War. For me, this is what college is supposed to be: motivated students reading important and sometimes difficult texts and coming to terms with them. I'm going to incorporate some of the teaching and discussion methods I used in this course into my other courses, with the hope that it will help students directly engage the readings in a deeper way.  I am already looking forward to next fall and the new crop of Rhetoric students!

I spent the majority of my non-teaching time preparing for a course funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities Enduring Questions Course Grant. My course focuses on the question "Do we need God for the good life?" This fall I spent most of my time reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality, and some secondary literature dealing with these works. I found digging into these books both challenging and rewarding, and have come away with a better understanding of each of them that is different than the commonly propagated caricatures of both works. I am currently working through some of Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, and I'll tackle Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics again before class begins in January. As a part of this course, I've looked at some of the evolutionary explanations of the origin of religion, as well as some neuroscientific accounts. I look forward to digging more deeply into these two areas in preparation for discussing them this spring.

Most of the time I normally devote to research has been spent prepping for the above course, but I have been able to do some scholarly work as well as some more popular philosophy, including some book reviews and a journal article on compassion that is currently under review.  Wise Stewards was published in August by Kregel Academic, and was included in a list of the ten best biblical/theological works of 2009 by Andreas Kostenberger. My friend Doug Geivett and I are finishing up an edited collection of essays on Christian virtues to be published with Eerdmans, and I've got some popular level works at various stages of development relating philosophy to bicycling, the Olympics, fatherhood, and coffee (all with co-editors, which has been great!). I'm intending to move away from the popular-level stuff for a while. I think it is important for academics to do some good work aimed at a wider audience, and I've tried to do this in a variety of ways, but I'm ready to focus on scholarship for a while now.  In the short term I want to write some papers for academic journals on the virtue of humility, and something dealing with what I call "The Concessionary Morality Response" to some of the morally difficult passages in the Hebrew Bible.

But for now, I'm sleeping in, hanging out with my wife and kids and dogs, catching up on old episodes of LOST, making maximum use of Netflix, and though my life as a sports fan is pretty rough given the quality of play from both the Chiefs and the Royals, I can focus my fan attention on Kansas State basketball (they're ranked 12th right now). For now, I'm taking a couple of weeks off from blogging. Happy Holidays!

There is still hope for the student-athlete

From Ivan Maisel's Three Point Stance: 

It’s important that Notre Dame remain relevant in college football, not only for history and tradition, but because Notre Dame still believes that high academic standards and winning can co-exist. Asked Monday if it’s tough to focus on school while thinking about who the next coach might be, Irish defensive end Kapron Lewis-Moore said, “Actually with me the hardest thing is thinking about if I want to write about Aristotle in my philosophy paper.”

UPDATE: I would add that in my experience, the vast majority of college student athletes are true student athletes. I suppose what is refreshing in the above quote is that it breaks the stereotype of a football player at a major school not really caring about academics.

ProfHacker

I am often late to the table regarding useful places on the web, but today I came across something that I will actually use and return to without feeling like I'm wasting my time. It's called ProfHacker, which "delivers tips, tutorials, and commentary on pedagogy, productivity, and technology in higher education, Monday through Friday." I just read the End of Semester Checklist post, which has some nice ideas (except two: shredding old papers and backing up class materials...well, these are good ideas, but at present seem too painful!). Anyway, other academics who read my blog or stumble across this post will find ProfHacker to be worth a bookmark in your browser.

Adversarial growth and the problem of evil

I've been doing some thinking about the problem of evil for theistic belief lately in the context of some of the morally difficult passages present in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible.  There has been a significant body of work done on "both sides" of the problem of evil more generally in the past thirty years or so.  One strand of response to the problem includes the claim that part of what justifies God allowing the evil and suffering that exists is the greater good of moral and spiritual development that this can foster in human beings.  Given the nature of human virtue, evil and suffering are necessary preconditions for growth in the virtues.  For example, if I want to develop courage, I must exist in a context in which I face at least some adversity. Or if I want to develop perseverance, then there must be something to endure and persevere through, so to speak. There is now psychological evidence that this sort of thing does in fact occur. It looks like there is empirical evidence for the claim that human beings do grow in a variety of positive ways as a result of facing various kinds of adversity. 

Stand for Christmas?

I wrote about this on my old blog 2 years ago, but it seems that the so-called "battle" over Christmas is continuing. We now have standforchristmas.com. How should we take a stand for Christmas, you ask? Well, it isn't in seeking to foster peace on earth, working for social justice, or even donating to charity. It's not in talking about the spiritual aspects of the holiday having to do with the Incarnation of Jesus.  It's not even in wishing other people a merry Christmas.  No, it's in rating retailers with respect to how "Christmas-friendly" they are, where this means that they "openly recognize Christmas." This means they have Christmas stuff up in the store and say "Merry Christmas" rather than something more generic.  Wal-mart, at the time of this posting, receives the following ratings: 64% Friendly, 25% Negligent, and 11% Negative. Ah, I see. The main un-Christian thing about Wal-mart is whether they say "Merry Christmas!" rather than the generic "Happy Holidays!"  But maybe there are some other issues requiring attention in the spirit of Christmas.

College Football: Ndamukong Suh for the Heisman and Inching towards Diversity

Well, Suh got at least one first place vote, but it looks like that at least according to the sports pundits McCoy or Ingram will win.  I am tired of the anti-defensive bias of the Heisman.

On another much more serious form of bias, with the hiring of Charlie Strong at Louisville four African-American college coaches have been tapped by FBS schools to fill coaching vacancies.  There has been only one African-American coach at an SEC school--one--but fortunately this will change when Joker Phillips takes over for Rich Brooks at Kentucky, when Brooks retires.

Has the Heisman lost its luster?

The following may just be the differences in perspective between the young football fan that I was as a child and the older fan that I am now. As a kid, the Heisman trophy was a HUGE deal. The winner was the best player in college football, and the winners read like a Who's Who among NFL greats (or so it seemed to me back then): Tony Dorsett, Earl Campbell, OJ Simpson, Roger Staubach, and Mike Garrett. Now, I'm not so sure that the trophy is as big of a deal, or at least as clear an indicator of excellence. Perhaps the criteria I'm using is incorrect, as one could be the best college football player in the country without having skills that transfer over to the NFL. However, a look at the winners in recent years shows compared to my childhood years does reveal a difference in post-college success as a football player.

The last 10 winners are Ron Dayne, Chris Weinke, Eric Crouch, Carson Palmer, Jason White, Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, Troy Smith, Tim Tebow, and Sam Bradford. You could make the case that only Palmer is a bona fide NFL star, with Bush on the borderline (it is at least the case that Bush has not met expectations). Prior to these 10, there are some impressive names. A look at the winners in the 80s is much more impressive overall with respect to NFL success: George Rogers, Marcus Allen, Herschel Walker, Mike Rozier, Doug Flutie, Bo Jackson, Vinny Testaverde, Tim Brown, Barry Sanders, and Andre Ware. Not all of these are stars or even successful NFL players, but this is still a very impressive list of winners. And the 90s include some greats, such as Charles Woodson and Eddie George, a very good player--Ricky Williams--and several not so good players with respect to NFL success: Ty Detmer, Desmond Howard, Gino Torretta, Charlie Ward, Rashaan Salaam, Danny Wuerfell, and Dayne.

Perhaps there is nothing significant about these apparent differences, but perhaps there is. Many winners in the 60s and 70s also had less than amazing NFL careers.  It's not clear to me whether the winners of today are comparable or not to winners in years past as far as NFL success goes.

On a related issue, I would like to see a dominant lineman or linebacker win this award, or even another defensive back. The offensive bias, especially in favor of QB's and RB's, needs to be eliminated. I find it hard to believe that the best player in college football is consistently a QB or RB. After what I've seen of McCoy and the dominance of Ndamukong Suh on Saturday night, Suh deserves the trophy more than McCoy, at least.